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President Obama has made the steady withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan a top priority for his second term, but his decision Tuesday to change course and slow the drawdown reflects a renewed concern about terrorism threats and a clear rapport with the new president after years of friction with his predecessor. The administration had planned to cut the U.S. military force to about 5,500 troops this year as part of a phased withdrawal. But Obama says he now plans to keep the current force of 9,800 troops there through the end of the year, although he still plans to end America’s longest war before he leaves office. At a White House news conference with President Ashraf...

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President Obama has made the steady withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan a top priority for his second term, but his decision Tuesday to change course and slow the drawdown reflects a renewed concern about terrorism threats and a clear rapport...

California high school students who have a parent in the military are far more likely than those from civilian families to have recently attempted suicide, according to a new study.
The findings are based on a survey of ninth and 11th graders at 261...

A Pentagon official confirmed the U.S. military lost contact with an unarmed Predator drone Tuesday while it was flying above northwestern Syria, but could not corroborate reports that the aircraft was shot down by President Bashar Assad’s air...

The beleaguered director of the Secret Service resigned Wednesday after President Obama lost confidence in her ability to lead the troubled agency amid a string of high-profile security lapses.
Julia A. Pierson, the first woman to hold the post,...

Bradley Cooper is locked and loaded in the first trailer for "American Sniper," the fact-based drama about Navy SEAL and sharpshooter Chris Kyle, and he finds nothing but trouble in his crosshairs.
Set to the sounds of a slowly building...

Under cover of darkness, three dozen U.S. commandos crept up on a walled compound in southern Yemen. Intelligence indicated that Luke Somers, an American hostage, was imprisoned inside.Conditions were far from ideal. Getting to Somers on foot required...

Kurdish fighters backed by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes on Sunday entered the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar, which has been held by Islamic State militants for months.The campaign to retake the mountain town is the latest effort to regain ground lost...

Yolande Korkie allowed herself to imagine embracing her husband, schoolteacher Pierre Korkie, when she was told Saturday he was about to be freed by militants holding him hostage in Yemen and would be home by Christmas.
Instead, she received his...

Jeffrey E. Fowle, an American imprisoned in North Korea for six months, was freed Tuesday in an unexpected move that raised hope for the release of two other Americans.
Fowle, 56, an Ohio municipal worker who was arrested after leaving a Bible in a...

The number of military veterans in the U.S. Senate had declined in every election since 1982 — until Tuesday.
Victories by three newcomers — Republicans Tom Cotton in Arkansas and Joni Ernst in Iowa and Democrat Gary Peters in Michigan — guarantee that...

Backstage before a debate between the two main candidates vying for Montana’s lone seat in the U.S. House, the moderator joked with John Lewis, the Democrat, asking whether he had brought his guitar to perform.
The Republican, Ryan Zinke, a former Navy...

British prosecutors dropped terrorism-related charges against former Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg on Wednesday, days before his trial was scheduled to begin.
Begg, a Briton of Pakistani descent, was arrested in February and charged with seven...

For his World War II service as an intelligence officer in Nazi-occupied France, Charles Hostler received a Legion of Merit award from the U.S. and a French Legion of Honor.
He also got something else: a scar on his forehead from the butt of a meat ax...

It took a New York jury just a few hours to convict an Egyptian-born cleric this year on charges he tried to set up a terrorist training camp in rural Oregon, and now one of his alleged co-conspirators in the plot is on U.S. soil after being extradited...

The United States and its allies are no longer losing the war against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and in the Middle East, that counts as progress.
In Syria, the besieged Kurdish town of Kobani, nearly given up for lost two weeks ago, has held off...

Moving to help check the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, the Pentagon on Friday opened its second mobile laboratory in Liberia, the country hit hardest by the deadly disease.
Three weeks after President Obama announced that the Pentagon would help respond...

Public concerns about Ebola have grown much faster than the actual number of cases of the illness in the U.S.
A Pew Research Center survey released Tuesday found that 41% of Americans said they worried that they or someone in their families would be...

The U.S. military said late Sunday it used cargo planes to drop weapons, ammunition and medical supplies to Kurdish militia forces in the Syrian border town of Kobani to help them in their fight against Islamic State militants, who have been trying to...

"When anxious, uneasy and bad thoughts come, I go to the sea," Rainer Maria Rilke wrote.
This is where the 19th century Austrian poet and I part ways. Not that I don't appreciate drifting in warm azure waters like those off Maui — if things are...

The Pentagon announced Sunday it is putting together a 30-person rapid-response team that could provide quick medical support to civilian healthcare workers if additional cases of the Ebola virus are diagnosed in the United States.
Defense Secretary...